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Thursday, April 19, 2018

The waste of waste

American households toss out 150,000 tons of food each day — roughly a pound of food per person per day.The volume of discarded food wastes what is equivalent to the yearly use of 30 million acres of land, alongside the use of 780 million pounds of pesticide, and 4.2 trillion gallons of water. The rotting food also emits methane as it disintegrates in landfills, adding to the atmosphere’s stock of greenhouse gases.Lisa Jahns, a nutritionist at the USDA, told the Guardian, “Consumers aren’t connecting the dots, they don’t see the cost when they throw food in the trash.”